


the lost art of having skin

by hardlygolden



Category: Being Human
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-20
Updated: 2010-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-13 20:16:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/141344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hardlygolden/pseuds/hardlygolden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Mitchell hadn't entirely realised what they were building together, the three of them; what they have already built.</i></p><p>A brief interlude of peace, set post-S1.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the lost art of having skin

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mayachain](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mayachain/gifts).



> Title from The Long Winters _The Sound of Coming Down_

"So," Annie says, one night when they're clustered around the television. They're watching a reality program, some B-grade celebrities on an island eating bull testicles and pig brains, and George is pulling all manner of faces as he loudly bemoans the cruel and unusual nature of the state of British programming.

Mitchell is tempted to remind him that on some mornings after a full moon, he's found George licking fairly dubious substances off his own paws, but he restrains himself - largely because of the _speaking look_ Annie shoots him - but also because this is George, back to normal, and Mitchell doesn't want to do anything to destroy this balance that's settled between them. It's an easy equilibrium that he didn't realise how much he had missed until it had been threatened. It feels good, not to be looking over their shoulder all the time, waiting for all that they've been running from to finally catch them and swallow them whole. For the moment, life is good, and they could be like any other flatmates watching television together on a Sunday night. They're not just any other flatmates, though, of course, and it's why they can understand each other, why what they have is so precious.

Mitchell hadn't entirely realised what it was they were building together, the three of them; what they have already built.

"So," George echoes back at Annie. "What's so?" George is sitting on the couch, posture upright as usual. Annie has her feet kicked over into his lap.

"So, I don't know if I've ever asked," Annie says. "Where did you two live, before you moved here?"

George squints at Annie, confused. "I had a room over a café. Mitchell was staying at a hotel."

"Oh," Annie says, obviously surprised. "I rather thought you would’ve lived together."

"We were working together," George says, somewhat defensively, pausing to take a sip of his tea. "We were _colleagues."_

"Don't think hospital porters typically throw around words like _colleagues_ , George," chimes in Mitchell.

George's outraged splutter is everything Mitchell could ever have hoped it would be.

"We thought we'd try it out, make a proper go of it," Mitchell interjects smoothly. "Being human, that is."

"Of course, moving into a house with a bloody ghost made short work of that plan before it even got off the ground," says George, but although the words are harsh his voice is fond, and his smile takes any remaining sting out of the words.

Annie smiles back. "But you're not human, are you? I mean, we all _used_ to be human, the three of us. But we're not anymore. We’re something different. You can’t go home again, can you, or at least, people always say that. Not that that’s true for me, I’ve certainly come home, looks like I won’t ever leave it, in fact – “

“Annie,” Mitchell says. “You’re rambling.”

“Sorry,” she says, looking down at her hands, which she twists together as she speaks. “It’s just – this whole door business. Now it’s gone, it all feels a bit anti-climatic, really.”

“ _Climactic,”_ George corrects. “The word is anti- _climactic._ Unless you’re talking about the weather.”

“No,” Annie says. “I wasn’t talking about the weather.”

“Bloody hell, George,” Mitchell protests. “Can’t you lay off the grammar lesson for a few minutes?”

“It’s not _grammar_ ,” George says, bristling. “It’s...” but then he must notice the look on Annie’s face, because he places his hand over the top of Annie's, and leans forward so he is looking directly at her.

“You," he says, unbelievably earnest, "are the most alive person I've ever met, Annie."

Annie dimples obligingly.

For a moment there, Mitchell is almost convinced that George is going to kiss Annie’s hand, like something out of Annie’s _Pride & Prejudice._ He doesn’t, though, just gives it an awkward pat.

Sometimes Mitchell thinks, with equal parts affection and exasperation, that it's George that's the remnant from another century, not him. He can picture George, with his proper manners and posture and befuddled chivalry, George in a starched white collar at the theatre, blinking through a monocle (because George _would_ be old-fashioned, even by last century standards).

Mitchell has always been able to adapt, to ride the currents of society and blend seamlessly into wherever and whoever he currently is. Over the course of the last century, he has been a son, a brother, a student, a soldier, a vampire, an artist, a beatnik, a musician, a poet, a journalist, a pacifist. He slips in and out of character like an actor, and each identity fits him as easily as the worn leather jacket he wore in the 80s, during his hair metal phase.

Through it all, he’s been a vampire for the majority of his decades on this earth. He’s killed people – although he killed people when he was a soldier, too, before he was turned - and for awhile he’d believed being a vampire was just another kind of war, fought on a battlefield of bloodlust and bared fangs. He nows know the real war is the fight to not lose himself, this person he's becoming. He _likes_ this version of himself - the one that teases George mercilessly and holds Annie's hand during scary movies.

He hasn't been John Mitchell - _the_ real John Mitchell - for a very long time.  It's a simplicity of being that he can never return to. There’s no going back from what he’s done and who he’s been. But perhaps he can go forward - become something better; more complex. When he hears Annie say his name, sees George smile when their eyes meet, he can't quite find it in himself to regret the path he's walked; the path that's led him here.

He wants to be the Mitchell they already think he is. 

"The three of us against the world," Mitchell says, and he intends it mostly as a joke but somehow the words come out laden with a certain solemnity.

"Why _against_ the world?" George says fretfully. "There doesn't always need to be an _against_. Do you know, before I met you, I didn't have a single enemy. Not one." George raises a hand to where Herrick had bruised him, the marks still visible, for all that it’s been almost a week. Mitchell's almost sure the gesture was unconscious, but he still feels a lump in his throat. He had been so ready to believe that George could walk away from this, from their unlikely trio. He'd believed it, because he'd been expecting it, right from the very first.

"Okay, okay, no against," Mitchell says, waving a hand lazily to cut him off. George responds by raising his middle finger. Mitchell grins, the way he does every time George does something that shatters the prim-and-proper persona he so often constructs around him.

Annie hugs her knees to her chest, looking between them both fondly.

"So," Annie says, lips curving into a contented smile.  "The three of us, then."

 

*


End file.
